As an IT professional I tend to work on multiple systems (tablets, laptops, desktops) and I use OneDrive (SkyDrive) extensively to always have access to the latest versions of my documents.

I love OneDrive, but today when I wanted to continue working on my desktop I got an error : “onedrive sync engine host stopped working”. So first thing I tried was just restarting OneDrive, which didn’t work. Then I figured … ah well let’s just reboot and see what happens.

When this also didn’t work I looked online and saw I wasn’t the only one experiencing this. I also came across the OneDrive Troubleshooter tool. After I ran this, followed the instructions and waited about 5-10 minutes, it worked properly again.

I hope this helps you to resolve similar issues.

Notes:

In processes the process shows as OneDrive Sync Engine Host , but the process is still SkyDrive.exe

Last week I got a beta exam invite for exam “70-688 Managing and Maintaining Windows 8” (in beta it is 71-688). As with most beta exams lately, you only have max two weeks to prepare and there are no books available yet that you can use to study. Therefore I start with looking at what skills are being measured and if there are preparation guides available. From there on I start looking for relevant learning resources for each subject and adding them to the skills that are being measured for easy future reference.

Context

If you’re anything like me, you’ve created your fair share of user names and passwords over the years and it is likely that many more will be added in the future as well. To complicate things even more, you are probably using multiple different user names and passwords because of different requirements. Possible reasons:

Username (because your desired username might not meet the requirements or might already be in use. Or because your -email is used as your username)

Minimum number of characters.

Maximum number of characters.

(Specific) special characters required.

(Specific) special characters not allowed.

x number of upper case characters

x number of lower case characters

x number of digits.

x number of special characters.

Password needs to be changed every x days.

Because of the large number of accounts (I have about 200-300 accounts) it is impossible to remember them all. Even though it might be tempting to use (a couple of) the same username and password combinations for logging on, this is not recommended because it is a security risk. When one of the places where you use a specific user/password combination is compromised, all other places where you use this same combination are at risk too. In this post I will try to describe some challenges and what you can do about it.

Also keep in mind that Microsoft Skydrive will become more and more integrated with Windows 8 and that they have also released an application (like dropbox) that also works for previous Windows versions. For more information check: